Table of Contents

Cover

A Selection of Recent Titles by R.N. Morris

Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

Part One: Love

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Part Two: Money

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Part Three: Death

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

A Selection of Recent Titles by R.N. Morris

The Silas Quinn Series

SUMMON UP THE BLOOD *

THE MANNEQUIN HOUSE *

THE DARK PALACE *

The Porfiry Petrovich Series

THE GENTLE AXE

A VENGEFUL LONGING

A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK

THE CLEANSING FLAMES

* available from Severn House

THE DARK PALACE

A Silas Quinn Mystery

R.N. Morris

The Dark Palace _1.jpg

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which is was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicably copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

This first world edition published 2014

in Great Britain and the USA by

Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2014 by R.N. Morris

The right of R.N. Morris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Morris, Roger, 1960

The dark palace. – (A Silas Quinn mystery; 3)

1. Quinn, Silas (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Assault and battery–England–London–Fiction.

3. London (England)–History–1800-1950–Fiction.

4. Motion picture industry–Fiction. 5. Detective and

mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-059-1

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-544-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-508-6 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to Andrew Martin and Piers Connor for their help with certain details of the London Underground of the period, and to Britta Osthaus for help checking the German. Any mistakes in either case are entirely mine.

Thanks also to everyone at Severn House, especially Kate Lyall Grant and Sara Porter, my copy-editor, Claire Ritchie, and proofreader, Emma Grundy Haigh, and to my agent, Christopher Sinclair Stevenson.

Love constitutes a great human interest, of course. Money has an appeal as strong or sometimes even stronger. Then there is death, horrid enough one might think, yet capable like the rest of being turned for the occasion into an unwilling pay box attendant.

The Handbook of Kinematography

Colin N. Bennett, F.C.S., and collaborators (London: Kinematograph Weekly, 1911).

PART ONE

Love

ONE

The darkness liberated him. He moved through it like a fish through the depths. It was his element.

He was clad in black, a loose black hood over his head. He felt the cloth of the hood against his face. As if the darkness had formed itself into a soft membrane and drifted on to him.

He smiled beneath the hood. A smile that no one would ever see.

There was no darkness like the darkness in this place. It was leavened by a silver cast of moonlight from the high windows. But it was what he knew about this darkness that distinguished it. His knowledge of what it contained.

And he was part of it now. He was at one with it. More than that, he was about to make off with its secrets, the source of its unique potency.

He had a right to smile. He had earned it.

He picked his way through a lattice of shadows, his arms held out as if to initiate an embrace. He had trained himself to move without reliance on sight. It was a perverse skill for one who lived by the visual to develop, but it served him well at moments like this. And there always would be moments like this. He had counted the steps earlier in the week, when the assistant he had bribed and flattered and cajoled had led him to the room where treasures he wanted would be stored.

The door was a looming presence, a sentinel.

His black-gloved hand flicked out to test the handle. Locked, as he knew it would be. He tensed a muscle in his hidden smile. He knew how little municipal workers were paid. It had not taken much to buy the privilege of handling the keys for long enough to make an imprint. Naturally, he had been ready with a perfectly innocent explanation. And the promise of fame and riches had been enough to quell any doubts the man might have had.

That was all it had taken: to locate the vanity of a weak, overlooked man and exploit it. Every man had his vanity, which was only the same as saying every man had his price.

The key resisted. He kept the pressure firm and constant, careful not to force it.

Click!

He looked behind him anxiously, a redundant gesture. He knew there was no other living soul in the place at this time of night.

And now, as he stepped into the room, he had the sense that the darkness here had been waiting for him. There seemed to be an eagerness contained in it.

Of course, he was enough of a psychologist to know that these were his own feelings he was projecting on to it. But that was the thing about the darkness, the beauty of it. It was a fantastic receptacle of projections.


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